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JAAVSO: Editorial Policy

The Journal of the AAVSO is an instrument of the AAVSO, whose mission is "to enable anyone, anywhere, to participate in scientific discovery through variable star astronomy". The purpose of the JAAVSO is to promote the AAVSO's overall mission by serving as the preeminent publication venue not only for AAVSO Members, but for the entire community of variable star scientists and researchers.

Publication criteria

Articles submitted for publication in the Journal of the AAVSO are expected to meet our criteria for publication, and both authors and referees are encouraged to follow these guidelines as closely as possible. Because the JAAVSO accepts articles on a variety of topics related to variable stars, articles with different subject matter may have slightly different acceptance criteria. However, all articles are expected to meet or exceed these general guidelines for peer-reviewed publication:

The article must be presented in clear, concise, and non-idiomatic English;

Regardless of subject matter, the article must represent original research with meaningful contributions to the work by the lead author and all listed co-authors;

All research must be clearly presented, with results and conclusions drawn from the research presented when appropriate;

All articles must properly acknowledge and cite external sources, and must accurately and truthfully represent all citations made;

All articles involving analysis of data taken by observers not listed as co-authors must adequately acknowledge these data, particularly those obtained from the AAVSO International Database.

While the JAAVSO accepts work from researchers with both Professional and Amateur backgrounds, all work published in the Journal of the AAVSO is expected to meet these criteria for acceptance at a minimum.

Ethics statement

The Journal of the AAVSO is a scholarly journal devoted to variable star science and related fields. We adhere to common standards of science and scholarship, and expect that our authors do the same. All results presented must be as accurate as possible, and free of known error and misstatements. All work must be correctly attributed, and all individuals making a significant contribution to the work presented should be explicitly credited with their contribution either via co-authorship or via appropriate citation and acknowledgement. All work, including both research results and text and figures, must be original, the creation of the authors of the article, and free of plagiarism either deliberate or accidental.

Copyright

Copyright for work published in JAAVSO is held by the AAVSO. The copyright consists of all rights protected by the original copyright lawas of the United States and of all foreign countries, in all languages and forms of communication. The AAVSO, in return, grants to the author the non-exclusive right of publication, subject to your giving appropriate credit to JAAVSO. To protect the copyright in the paper, the original copyright notice as it appears in JAAVSO should be included in the credit. The author may grant or deny requests to reprint his or her paper in books or journals, and may retain all fees from such reprinting. We will forward such requests to you.